Iowa lawmaker won't apologise for comments about Obama favouring minorities

Washington, June 17 (ANI): Iowa Republican Representative Steve King has said he won't apologise for accusing President Barack Obama of favouring blacks over whites, adding that his comments have been made in the public interest.

"I'm standing up against something that is or could become racism," King told FoxNews.com on Wednesday.

King said his comments alluded to a July 2009 incident in which a white police officer in Cambridge, Massachusetts, arrested a black professor for disorderly conduct.

Before knowing all the facts, Obama said Sergeant James Crowley had acted "stupidly" when he apprehended Harvard Professor Henry Louis Gates Junior outside his home.

Obama later said he did not intend to malign the police offer -- and invited the two men to a "beer summit" at the White House -- but King claims his initial remarks showed a "built-in defense mechanism" that favours minorities.

King said Obama's first public statement on the incident "brought up race in the beginning" and "concluded with race."

The three-term congressman repeated his claim that Obama has "a default mechanism that breaks down on the side of the minority."

But King stopped short of calling the president a racist.

"I don't know if I want to go so far as to make that allegation," he said.

King went on to cite more recent remarks from Obama in which the president criticized Arizona's controversial immigration law by suggesting it could lead to racial profiling-a concern held by the administration and most Democrats as well as civil rights groups fighting to repeal the legislation. (ANI)